Reliance on Cold Fact
Now in the PhD program in mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin, Sean Hart ’08 spent three summers in the Undergraduate Research Summer Institute with math professor Natalie Frank working on dynamical systems based on Voronoi diagrams.
Q. Did you come to Vassar knowing you wanted to study math?
My junior year in high school I had a really great teacher for precalculus. He was a fantastic teacher, and he sort of got me interested in pursuing math, and then I took AP calculus and AP statistics, and I loved being immersed in that world. When I got here, I was still open to the possibility of doing something else. I actually toyed with the idea of majoring in music or double-majoring, but in the end, mathematics is something that I always enjoy.
Q. What do you like about math?
The answer changes every class I take. I like the reliance on cold fact. You assume certain things, and you derive other things from that, and there’s no interpretation to be had, except in the meaning or significance of a result. As far as what is right or what is wrong, there’s no room for arguing. So it’s nice to have that to fall back on. Oftentimes it feels like a game. You’re playing around with symbols, and you can get meaningful results just by moving things around. You might say these things are abstract, meaningless, who cares? And then you look in nature and—oh, wait...there’s a golden ratio. Or you throw a rock and its trajectory is governed by Newtonian mechanics. But I also like the fact that math is this abstract entity—that it doesn’t need to be grounded in reality for it to be interesting and meaningful. I contend that proofs are on par with poems.
Q. Tell me about your URSI experience.
I did three summers of URSI with Professor Frank constructing dynamical systems based on Voronoi diagrams. It was a really great experience. Most people have no idea what real research is like. You get used to doing the class work, and you think you’re really good at that, but research is a whole different skill set. There’s apparently a big drop out rate in grad school, and I think a big contributor to that is that they don’t have research experience, and they don’t know whether they’re going to like it or not.
Q. Is mathematical research very different from other kinds of scientific research?
It’s not that different. You have a set of questions you want to answer, and you develop a hypothesis, and you test it. The main difference is that you’re not working with anything tangible—like solutions or organisms. And the equipment is basically a computer and a blackboard. Computer skills are definitely something that you need to have in this era of mathematics, but there’s really no substitute for banging your head against the chalkboard.
Q. What are you hoping to do eventually?
I’m entering a PhD program at the University of Texas at Austin next fall. Eventually, I’d like to be a professor at a school like Vassar. I look at my professors, and I see their responsibilities and their lives, and it’s something that I aspire to. It’s an attractive kind of life. I have some teaching experience. I was the SI [Supplemental Instruction] leader for calculus. So basically, I would go to class with the calc kids, and I would be taking my own notes, and twice a week I’d prepare a lesson and give a review lecture. I really like teaching.
Q. What’s the best class you’ve taken outside of the Math Department?
I took Japan in the Age of the Samurai—that was a whole lot of fun. It was an Asian studies course. We’d have a lecture about the history on Mondays, and then on Thursdays, we would watch a movie set in that era. I also had to write a paper, something I was out of practice with.
Q. What’s something you’ve gotten at Vassar that you don’t think you would have gotten elsewhere?
A lot of it is the environment, the liberal arts atmosphere. I could have gone to one of the big math schools, like the University of Chicago, but then you’re just hanging around with other math people all the time. One thing I’ve really appreciated about Vassar is all the different kinds of people here. I visited my friend up at Rochester, and he’s a computer scientist, and his friends are all computer science-math kind of people. I like knowing that almost everyone around me is doing something different than I’m doing, and they all have their own perspectives and ideas. I really like that.